This morning I woke feeling somewhat tender, a sad consequence of last night's excesses. I wasn't too bad, though, thank God.
Back when I was eighteen, after Stephen Owens' s 21st party I was called into work without warning. I eventually dragged myself out of bed and up the road, pausing to decorate the grass verge once or twice en route, and made it to the Granite a good half-hour later than I should have. Joe, the head barman, was standing at the door, and on seeing me roared 'Young Daly! Where've you been till now?' As I neared him, green-faced and trembling, he grinned wickedly, and growled 'Oh. Out buying sickness with the rest of them!' Stephen spent most of that morning polishing one tiny patch of shelf, while I took a good hour to sort out just one bottle skip. That was a ten minute job. I was deeply unwell.
But I digress.
(Could that be a new challenge? Terms that indicate being hungover? Hungover, frail, tender, under the weather, not the best, unusual, shaky, wasted, dead, corpsed... I like it when people have 'big mouldy -pronounced 'mowldy' - heads on them... Germans apparently hear the 'wailing of cats' while a Swede would have 'workmen in his head'... let's hear some comments, people... it's kind of quiet in the margins! SHOUT OUT!)
Yeah, so, I was enfeebled, but alive. Barely. I moved table when the girl next to me began singing Beethoven's Ode to Joy in her irritatingly high pitched voice, substituting 'la' in for every syllable. After about twelve second of that I got up to get tea, and then plonked myself down in the far more sane, and indeed subdued, company of Shaw, Jenny, Chris, Marlisa, Dave, Eddie, Kyriaki, and Jeannine. I was not the most tender of our gathering.
Went into Argos in the morning. The shop, in Manchester's Arndale Centre, not the town, in the Peloponnese, which is a rather ramshackle spot, though in its defense it must be said that it has a good museum. The museum features a nifty hoplite panoply - a helmet and cuirass anyway - and a huge stone head out the back which both Josh and I photographed wearing our respective hats. When I was there they had a special exhibition on of finds from the nearby site of Lerna, famed in myth as the hangout of the Lernean Hydra. There Monica merrily stole my joke - and fair play, I've robbed plenty in my time - to ask someone leaving the exhibition 'Did ya Lerna lot?' Boom boom.
But as I was saying, went to Argos to buy a little shelf unit, which I assembled this evening. I wanted it since I've nowhere to store my food, since my multitudinous books take up all my shelf space. Hitherto I've simply done without food here, coping with tea and sugar, kept in the top of my wardrobe, but I've long planned on rectifying that. Tomorrow, I shall buy stuff.
Went to mass, for a change, this evening. Marlisa came along with me, since I thought she'd enjoy it. Masses in the Holy Name, the big church on Oxford Road, can be really nice, and I thought today's would be a sung one, since the eighth of December is a holy day, the feast of the Immaculate Conception. The eighth has traditionally been an important day for entirely secular reasons in Ireland, with people from the country, or Culchies, as we so fondly term them,* thronging into Dublin to do their Christmas shopping. Sadly, however, because the eighth has fallen on a Sunday this year, the feast day has been shifted to tomorrow instead. We'll probably still go, as the sung masses in the Holy Name are lovely.
But anyway, mass was deeply weird today. Sunday's four o'clock mass is a Latin mass, but I was prepared for that. What I was not prepared for was a Tridentine Mass.
The Tridentine mass is the old church mass, used continuously from the time of the Council of Trent in the Sixteenth Century up to the Second Vatican Council, forty years ago, more-or-less. I had never been at one before. I don't know if anywhere in Ireland uses the Tridentine order rather than the New Order of mass.
I could easily have coped with a New Order mass said in Latin - that would be like walking round my own house blindfolded. But this? Oh no. This was like being given the keys to a new house, and then having to walk round that blindfolded. Occasionally I'd recognise something at random, the theological equivalent of tripping over the coffee table, rubbing your shin, and going 'ahhh... the coffee table.'
The consecration was highly amusing. I realise that statement may sound somewhat blasphemous, but what the Hell. One deacon, or something, would lift up the back of the priest's surcoat every time the priest genuflected. And every time the priest genuflected, the church bell rang. While this was undoubtedly quite impressive, it did prompt Marlisa to wonder whether there was some sort of bell-ringing button by the altar that he pressed every time he bent his knee.
The sermon was a drab and fairly poorly written letter from Bishop T.J. Brain (I think) of Salford. As the priest ascended the pulpit to read it, he removed his biretta and started, out of habit, I guess, to sing. After about four words he checked himself and returned to normal speech.
Incidentally, while I know his hat was a biretta, I can't remember what the rest of the his get up was called, though the brief but technical http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Delphi/7911/tridentinemass.html told me. A good explanation of the Tridentine mass can be found on this site, though the guy who wrote it is clearly more than a tad reactionary. Finally, next time I go I'll be preparing by looking at this translation.
*Less fond terms include 'mullahs', 'rednecks', 'boghoppers', and 'mucksavages'.
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